Diamond Bank Plc, in collaboration with mobile telecomm network MTN and three other financial services provider: JazzCash, Bima and Women World Banking (WWB) have converged to brainstorm on how to attract more women to digital finance banking in Nigeria and boost financial inclusion through products development.

With support from Women’s World Banking and other partners, the partnership seeks to make digital financial services work for low-income women.

The synergy would also help develop a global model for expanding women’s access and usage of digital financial services through simplified steps in account opening and banking transactions, using digital banking.

Speaking at a workshop organised by Diamond Bank to exchange different use cases for serving more women with digital financial services held in Lagos on Tuesday, the Chief Product Development Officer of Women’s World Banking, Anna Gincherman described digital finance as a new area with lots of innovations, noting that Diamond Bank has made strides in efforts to woo more unbanked women into the system.

She, however, noted that regulation is critical for creating enabling environment for digital financial services to work for women, noting that developing innovative financial inclusion approaches particularly for the one billion women around the world without access to financial services would grow the economy.

“Women represent social economic services for financial institutions, women represent majority of unbanked and under banked in the world, women are also managers of household, manages finance in families, education of kids, among others.

“So bringing financial institutions around the world to share experience on how best to serve women’s market with digital financial services will enhance will help reduce the effect of poverty in any economy.”

The Head, Retail Banking Businesses of the bank, Robert Giles explained that the future of financial inclusion is digital, adding that the strategic focus of the partnership is to enhance the financial lifestyle of women by providing convenient mobile banking services.

“With MTN, we have provided 10 million bank account to reach the unbanked people in Nigeria so we have come here today to talk about how we can improve cases of financial inclusion specifically for women how we can mull more women into financial system and make their life better.

“There are about 40 million people unbanked in the country 60 per cent are women so women are the most financially excluded women when they come into the financial system, they stay with you for a lot longer.”